Angie Tibbs asks UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to explain the double standards that allow him to condemn the Palestinians’ legally-enshrined right to self-defence while delivering a mild slap on the wrist to Israel for its war crimes in Gaza.
The United Nations, the world's preeminent law-making body, together with its Charter, provides the basis for laws and principles; therefore, people of conscience everywhere look to the UN with hope for upholding its Charter and its pledge to end the scourge of war. As the secretary-general, you, sir, are expected to at least speak words that honour this Charter and its principles.
However, while people of good conscience world-wide are expressing revulsion at Israel's terrorist attack on the defenceless in Gaza, you are already seeking to minimize war crimes of monumental proportions while echoing the disinformation of Israel and its supporters.
For instance, on 16 January 2009 the headlines read: "Ban urges unilateral ceasefire in Gaza conflict; meets with Palestine leaders".
You did not meet with "Palestinian leaders", sir. Palestinian leaders are either detained in Israeli or West Bank prisons, murdered by Israeli assassins, or in Gaza, where the world, in its sick attempts to placate Israel, refused to allow them to govern the people who elected them.
You met with traitors, the Palestinian Authority, whose party, Fatah, decisively lost the January 2006 election, yet they refused to go quietly or to work with the people's representatives. And here you are giving credence to Judas Abbas and his sick collusion with the killers of the Palestinian people, declaring with unbridled audacity, that you "underscore your full support for President Abbas's leadership".
On 21 January 2009, you urge all Palestinians to "work to restore one Palestinian government within the framework of the legitimate Palestinian Authority under President Abbas."
Not so fast, sir. Tell me how do you determine that a party which lost an internationally-monitored election is the legitimate authority?
And since his term as president was to officially end on 9 January 2009, continuing to refer to Abbas as "president" is misleading.
Hamas won 76 of 132 seats in the Palestinian Parliament, Fatah, a mere 43. The people had spoken. Instead of accepting the overwhelming victory of Hamas and urging the nations of the world to abide by the election results, Abbas and friends created one obstacle after another to prevent Hamas from rightfully assuming power. In fact, Abbas, to his everlasting shame, became a pathetic "yes man" for Israel and the United States, and his people and their wishes be damned.
The people of occupied Palestine, sickened by Fatah's corruption, exercised their democratic right (or so they thought!) and voted for Hamas. However, much of the world cravenly followed Israeli dictates and refused to recognize Hamas and to work with the legitimately elected party in its efforts to bring about positive change in the West Bank and Gaza. The UN, itself, sir, sat idly by while Gaza became the world's largest concentration camp, strangled to the point of starvation and economic ruin by a brutal, unrelenting occupier.
On 21 January 2009, you stated that the people of Gaza "were caught throughout this crisis between Hamas's unacceptable and irresponsible actions and Israel's blockade and use of excessive and disproportionate military force”.
So, you consider defending one's people and what's left of their homeland as "unacceptable and irresponsible", do you?
In just the past three years, Israeli forces have killed many hundreds of people in Gaza. Hundreds more died because Israel wouldn't allow them to leave Gaza to receive medical care. And on 27 December 2008, when Israeli forces began their long-planned assault on Gaza and its people, what protection did 1.5 million people have?
Did you see any F-16 bombers piloted by members of the military wing of Hamas? Did you see them launching missiles aimed at vapourizing their defenceless targets? Did you see them driving tanks? Using white phosphorous and other banned, or experimental weapons? Hell, not!
What you and the world saw was a sophisticated assortment of weapons being unleashed with merciless abandon on people whose only means of defence were guns and homemade projectiles. What's wrong with this picture, sir?
"Use of excessive and disproportionate military force," you say? Oh, it was a lot more than that, sir, and while you echo the usual catch phrase of the UN and gutless world leaders in describing the premeditated slaughter of human beings in occupied Palestine, you seem to have forgotten that, under international laws and Conventions, the Palestinian people have every right to protect themselves against the racist, genocidal killers who have been murdering them with impunity for over 60 years.
On 20 January 2009, you visited Sderot, in the company of war criminal Ehud Olmert, and to the astonishment of people of good conscience everywhere, you classified "Palestinian militants' projectiles as indiscriminate weapons and Hamas attacks are violations of basic humanitarian law", going on to describe Hamas's rocket fire against Israel as "appalling and unacceptable".
"Appalling and unacceptable," sir? First of all, it might behoove you to remember that Sderot is built on the ashes of the ethnically cleansed Palestinian town of Naid, whose inhabitants were forced from their homes and lands by Jewish terrorists in 1948. That is appalling, and yet you failed to mention it. Do you feel, sir, that ethnic cleansing (or slow-motion genocide as many call it) becomes acceptable with the passage of time?
Did you suggest to Olmert that Israel remove its inhabitants from Sderot and return it to its rightful owners? I don't think so.
Before you start prattling about "violations of basic humanitarian law", I suggest you look at the never-ending Israeli attacks on the people of Gaza and, in fact, all of occupied Palestine. Men, women, children. Israel does not differentiate. There are no bomb shelters in Gaza, are there, sir? There are no warning signals to announce another deadly bomb or missile attack.
And there are no "homemade projectiles" landing in Gaza to cause you to be "appalled", are there, sir? Nothing so rudimentary for Israel with its latest in war toys – bombs, missiles, tanks, white phosphorous, and who knows what experimental weapons there are in its arsenal. You don't have a problem with this? Or are you attempting to equate homemade rockets with Israel's weaponry?
I'm curious, sir. If you consider homemade rockets falling, for the most part, harmlessly into Sderot as "appalling and unacceptable" and "violations of basic humanitarian law", describe for us, please, how you view the brutal 60-year occupation of someone else's homeland, with ongoing deadly terror attacks?
If you want examples of "violations of basic humanitarian law", how about the Israeli war crimes in refusing the Palestinian people the right to exist, to move freely and safely in their own land, to live, work and play, and to enjoy the basic human, civil, social and economic rights that I have, that you have?
On 21 January 2009, you stated: "I have condemned from the outbreak of this conflict the excessive use of force by the Israeli forces in Gaza. I view the rocket attacks into Israel as completely unacceptable".
Interesting that the Israeli actions are only "condemned" whereas the rocket attacks are "completely unacceptable". In other words, you do not trample on the often blurted "Israeli right to defend itself" (i.e. the aggressor's right to protect itself from retaliation), so you couldn't say the excessive force was "completely unacceptable", could you?
Excessive force? Is that what you call three weeks of continual bombardment of over a million people with nowhere to go, no protection, no one to help them? I call it a premeditated massacre, sir.
You say you condemned the "the excessive use of force by Israeli forces in Gaza". Are you suggesting that force against the Palestinian people is permissible so long as it is not "excessive"? Is that what you are telling us? That you support the cold-blooded murder of Palestinians but not their right to retaliate with what minimal "weapons" they have?
That, sir, is what is completely "unacceptable".
What has the UN and its Security Council ever done to protect the Palestinian people against continual Israeli aggression? Show me a single instance in UN history where action was taken to protect them from the bombs and tanks and missiles of Israeli terrorists.
Yes, sir. Terrorists. Israel and its supporters love tossing that word about, insisting, for example, that Hizbollah and Hamas are "terrorist" organizations. However, over the past 60 years, and during the most recent attack on Gaza, the world has seen Israeli terror in all its horrific ugliness, and we will never forget. Yet, in those 60-plus years, the UN Security Council has never taken decisive action with respect to Israeli war crimes. Oh, there have been numerous resolutions, yes, but all have been ignored by Israel and never enforced by the UN Security Council. How is this inaction justified?
On 20 January 2009, you "visited the war-shattered Gaza Strip to demonstrate solidarity with the population and assure them of the full support of the United Nations and the international community".
Excuse me, sir, but where were you and "the international community" for the past three years while the people of Gaza were being kept on a Zionist-imposed diet in the world's largest concentration camp? Why did you wait until over 1300 of them were slaughtered in three weeks? What did the UN Security Council do? What did the "international community" (with the praiseworthy exceptions of Iran, Malaysia, Turkey and a few others) do? Nothing.
Instead of supporting the Palestinian people and their choice of government, the "international community", which likes to blather on about "democracy", chooses to ignore the results of the most democratic elections held in the region, and showed its hypocrisy by adhering to the Israeli line and shunning a people and its government. Blackmail at its most repugnant.
What did you do about that, sir? What did you do to remove this criminal siege? You and your Security Council allowed this monstrous crime to continue for three years. Where were the sanctions, the enforced resolutions? The UN Security Council, obviously choosing under pressure from the US and UK which nations it imposes sanctions against, continued to ignore Israeli atrocities, and for crimes against the Palestinian people there has been nothing. How is that inaction justified?
What kind of "support" do you have for the people of Gaza now, sir? Assistance if they denounce their elected officials? The "international community" and the UN Security Council never gave a damn about Palestinian people being tortured, killed and displaced in their homeland. Their cries for help have gone unheeded for over 60 years. Do you feel enough have been slaughtered now? Do you feel the devastation this time is sufficient? Is that it?
Israel never left Gaza, sir. Oh, there were great made-for-television moments when the illegal squatters were "removed", but the terrorizing of a defenceless people continued with nightly incursions; assassinations of resistance fighters and others; murders of women, children, the elderly; destruction of homes; curtailment of all rights and freedoms.
And you have the unmitigated gall to refer to the actions of Hamas as "unacceptable and irresponsible actions"?
It might well surprise you, sir, that the Palestinian people have every right to defend themselves against ongoing Israeli terrorism. Yet for over 60 years they have been left on their own, struggling valiantly to hang on to their lives, their homes, their lands. No "world leader" has ever declared that the people of occupied Palestine have a right to defend themselves or that they have a right to exist. Why not?
The crimes committed by Israel since its inception, not only against the Palestinian people, but the Lebanese, and all others in the region, are monumental, but this nation, with more sadistic war criminals than any other on earth, continues to kill and destroy without even a smartly delivered slap to the wrist. Terrorism with impunity. How reprehensible is that?
So, Mr Secretary-General of the UN, when is the UN Security Council going to set up a war crimes tribunal to try Israeli politicians, soldiers, rabbis and all others responsible for the war crimes and crimes against humanity they committed against the people of Gaza?
When is the UN Security Council going to revoke Israel's membership of the UN for failing to honour its terms of admittance?
When is the UN Security Council going to demand that Israel make complete reparation to the people of Gaza for this monstrous act of death and destruction? Or will others, as per the norm, have to fix what this brutal regime has destroyed while it spends the billions it receives yearly from US taxpayers on more weapons?
Or will this be another Jenin? Another South Lebanon? Another Qana?
This time, sir, this war crime against Gaza and its people will not be swept under the proverbial rug. The good people of the world have seen evil and have recoiled in revulsion. The good people of the world have heard the never-ending litany of outlandish Israeli propaganda. The world is waiting, and watching, and listening. The UN, with its credibility at a minimum, cannot remain silent. People of good conscience will not, cannot, and must not allow it.
